Amherst College - mesoscopic spin systemshttps://www.amherst.edu/taxonomy/term/8220
enWork of Amherst College Physics Professor Jonathan Friedman Named a Milestone by Nature Magazinehttps://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/news/news_releases/2008/08/node/60276
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="fine-print">August 19, 2008<br>Caroline Jenkins Hanna<br>Director of Media Relations<br>413/542-8417</span></p><p>AMHERST, Mass. – <i>Nature</i>, one of the world’s leading academic journals, has recognized the 1996 research of Amherst College physics professor Jonathan Friedman as a major scientific development in spin physics. Friedman’s work exploring mesoscopic spin systems was noted in the publication’s “Milestones in Spin” supplement, highlighting the most influential discoveries in the field since 1896.<!--break--></p><table class="table-align-right-gradient" border="0" cellspacing="5"><tbody><tr><td><div class="mediainline"><span class="inline"><img class="image original image-margin" src="/media/view/60297/original/friedman_j.jpg" border="0" alt="" width="227" height="300"></span></div><div align="center"> Physics Professor Jonathan Friedman<br></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>“Naturally, I was delighted to see my work lauded in this way,” said Friedman, who continues to do research in the field at Amherst. “When my colleagues and I made the discovery of tunneling between spin states in these single-molecule magnets, I knew it was important work, but I would not have foreseen that it would ignite an entire research field. That’s been phenomenal.” The field of single-molecule magnets (each molecule behaving like a tiny magnet) now involves hundreds of researchers around the world and more than 1000 papers have been published in the field.<br><br>In “Milestones in Spin,” editors with the London-based Nature Publishing Group covered what they considered to be breakthrough developments in spin in 23 short “Milestone” articles. (Spin is the intrinsic angular momentum of elementary particles that gives rise to their magnetism and, by extension, the magnetism of many materials.) The pieces discuss landmark discoveries in the context of the prevailing concepts at the time they were made as well as scientists’ current knowledge of the field. Friedman’s research is mentioned in Milestone 22, which deals with the mesoscopic tunneling of magnetism. <br><br>“The year 1996 saw the publication, by Jonathan Friedman <i>et al</i>. and Luc Thomas <i>et al.</i>, of what many consider to be the definitive proof that mesoscopic spin systems … can undergo quantum-mechanical tunneling of their total magnetization,” the <i>Nature </i>piece reads. “These experiments revealed transitions between bulk magnetic states that were not driven by thermal fluctuations, as one would expect classically; instead, they corresponded unambiguously to quantum-mechanical tunneling events between different collective spin states of the whole system that have been brought into resonance by an applied magnetic field.” <br><br>Tunneling, according to Friedman, is a uniquely quantum phenomenon in which a system—a particle, for example—can traverse an energy barrier without having enough energy to overcome it. When such an event occurs, the system is said to have “tunneled through” the barrier. Friedman’s work was the first to show definitively that a magnet could reverse direction from pointing up to down by tunneling. <br><br>Friedman earned a bachelor of arts degree from Vassar College and his doctorate in physics from the City University of New York. He joined the Amherst faculty in 2001 after several years working at Stony Brook University. In 2002, Friedman shared the Agilent Technologies Europhysics Prize, one of the most prestigious physics prizes awarded by the European Physical Society, for his work in this field.<br><br>In addition to the articles, “Milestones in Spin” includes a timeline—a chronology of the earliest papers connected with each Milestone—and a reprinted collection of relevant articles and reviews from <i>Nature</i>, <i>Nature Materials</i>, <i>Nature Physics</i> and <i>Nature Structural Biology</i>. The “Milestones”article on Friedman’s work can be found at <a href="http://www.nature.com/milestones/milespin/full/milespin22.html">www.nature.com/milestones/milespin/full/milespin22.html</a>. For more on Friedman, go to <a href="/~jrfriedman">www.amherst.edu/~jrfriedman</a>.</p><div align="center">###<br></div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/862">Amherst College</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4076">Jonathan Friedman</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4236">nature</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/8219">Milestones in Spin</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/8220">mesoscopic spin systems</a></div></div></div>Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:19:09 +0000channa60276 at https://www.amherst.edu